The National Security Agency is authorized to conduct spying operations on nearly every country and major political organization and intercept communications that talk about those countries, according to a set of newly published documents provided to The Washington Post by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The only countries absent from the list of targets are the other four members of the “Five Eyes” group of English-speaking countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The Five Eyes routinely share high-level intelligence and are believed to have agreed not to spy on one another. (Although the US seems to have direct access to British metadata.)

Further Reading

The 2010 documents include a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order authorizing espionage operations against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. But that same list also includes obvious allies of the US, including nearly all members of the European Union as well as transnational political organizations such as the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the League of Arab States, and others. Surprisingly, the list also specifically mentions a number of political parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which recently won elections in India.

An affidavit labeled “FOR TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY” and seemingly authored by then-NSA Director Keith Alexander states that the NSA targets those who “possess, are expected to receive and/or are likely to communicate foreign intelligence information concerning these foreign powers.”

A spokeswoman for the NSA, Vanee Vines, told the Post that the agency only targets foreigners “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”

Vines also noted that in January 2014, President Barack Obama issued President Policy Directive 28, which establishes a large set of broad conditions where the American government is authorized to collect large amounts of data on foreigners.